Writings on Norbert Wiener
Norbert Wiener’s works are becoming more difficult to find. Here are several that may still be available.
Dark Hero of the Information Age: In Search of Norbert Wiener, the Father of Cybernetics
Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman (New York: Basic Books, 2005/2006).
The most recent biography, addresses the complexity of Wiener’s life and work.
John von Neumann and Norbert Wiener: From mathematics to the technologies of life and death
Steve J. Heims (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1980).
The writer’s critical perspective regarding military technology leads to a co-biography supportive of Wiener but not of von Neumann.
Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and politics in Allende’s Chile
E. Medina (Cambridge MA: MIT Press 2011).
Wiener dubbed Stafford Beer the father of management cybernetics. This book describes Beer’s participation in Project Cybersyn, a unique experiment in technology and management undertaken by Chile’s Allende government in the early 1970s.
From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism
Fred Turner (U of Chicago Press, 2006).
Fred Turner convincingly portrays a cadre of journalists who strove to transform the idea of the computer from a threat to personal freedom in the cold war into a means to such freedom in an emerging digital utopia.
From Newspeak to Cyberspeak: A history of Soviet cybernetics
S. Gerovitch (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002).
Given the parallel between Wiener and Kolmogorov’s mathematical work, it is interesting to see that cybernetics was entwined with the opening up of Soviet science from the mid-1950s.
How we became posthuman: Virtual bodies in cybernetic, literature and informatics
N.K. Hayles (University of Chicago Press, 1999).
Considering the concept of ‘human and machine’ from a non-technical perspective.
Norbert Wiener 1894-1964
P.R. Masani (Boston: Virkhauser Verlag, 1990,Vita Mathematica Vol 5).
A mathematician’s biography written by a long-time collaborator, who edited Wiener’s collected works.
Not So Fast: Thinking Twice About Technology
Doug Hill
“Technology is a two-edged sword, and sooner or later it will cut you deep.” – Norbert Wiener
“This is the technology criticism I’ve been waiting for. Not So Fast is readable, meticulously sourced, and, above all – nuanced. I recommend it for technology critics and enthusiasts alike.”
– Howard Rheingold, author of Tools for Thought, The Virtual Community, Smart Mobs and Net Smart
The Democratic Surround: Multimedia and American Liberalism from World War II to the Psychedelic Sixties
Fred Turner (U of Chicago Press, 2014).
Some of the most well-known artists and intellectuals of the ’40s developed new models of media, theories of interpersonal and international collaboration, and visions of a democratic self in contrast to the repression and conformity associated with the fascist and communist movements.
Norbert Wiener, La cybernétique, French translation of Cybernetics by
R. Le Roux, R. et N. Vallée (Paris: Seuil, 2014).
The seminal work, at last available in French!
Pierre Cassou-Noguès, Les rêveries cybernétiques de Norbert Wiener
(Paris: Seuil, 2014)
A highly original essay on Wiener’s thought, based on his unpublished fictional writings.
Norbert Wiener, Cybernétique et société, French translation of The Human Use of Human Beings by P.-Y. Mistoulon (Paris: Seuil, 2014).
Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman, authors of the Wiener biography Dark Hero of the Information Age: In Search of Norbert Wiener, the Father of Cybernetics (New York: Basic Books, 2005/2006), have prepared a series, “Some Notes on…”, for the conference: